The American surveillance state is now an omnipresent reality, but its
deep history is little known and its future little grasped. Edward
Snowden’s leaked documents
reveal that, in a post-9/11 state of war, the National Security Agency
(NSA) was able to create a surveillance system that could secretly
monitor the private communications of almost every American in the name
of fighting foreign terrorists. The technology used is state of the art;
the impulse, it turns out, is nothing new. For well over a century,
what might be called “surveillance blowback” from America’s wars has
ensured the creation of an ever more massive and omnipresent internal
security and surveillance apparatus. Its future (though not ours) looks
bright indeed.